What’s The One Thing That Keeps Searchers From Converting On Your Site?

There is an insidious voice speaking to your visitors from the moment they click through to your site. It camps in the back of their minds, setting up a tent and proceeding to talk your visitors out of taking action. While there are many angles this voice can work to fill visitors with doubt, there is likely one that is common to a large number of your visitors. It’s “the thing.” If you can discover and address the thing — the major concern shared by a significant number of your visitors —then you can make some major improvements in your conversion rates and revenue per click. When testing, we have found that this thing will fall into one of five areas: risk reversal, value proposition/messaging, social proof, user interface/user experience, and credibility/authority. All of these nagging questions may be present to some degree, but one of them is more pressing than the others — and addressing it will give you wins early and often. I recommend that you open a spreadsheet so you can capture the hypotheses that come to mind as you read these gems. Your hypotheses should read like this: “If I [change something] then more visitors will [do something good or stop doing something bad] as measured by [some metric like revenue per visit or conversion rate].” Let’s get started. Risk Reversal The thought camping at the back of your visitors’ heads may be, “What if I regret this purchase?” What if I don’t like it? What…